Research of Dr. Esselstyn

Dr. Esselstyn of the esteemed Cleveland Clinic started to reexamine the standard medical practice. “Aware that medical, angiographic and surgical interventions were treating only the symptoms of heart disease and believing that a fundamentally different approach to treatment was necessary,” Dr. Esselstyn decided to test the effects of a whole foods, plant-based diet on people with established coronary disease. By using a minimal amount of cholesterol-lowering medication and a very low-fat, plant-based diet, he has gotten the most spectacular results ever recorded in the treatment of heart disease.

In 1985, Dr. Esselstyn begain his study with the primary goal of reducing his patients’ blood cholesterol to below 150 mg/dL. He asked each patient to record everything he or she ate in a food diary…

The diet they, including Dr. Esselstyn and his wife Ann, followed was free of all added fat and almost all animal products. Dr. Esselstyn and his colleagues report, “[Participants] were to avoid oils, meat, fish, fowl and dairy products, except for skim milk and nonfat yogurt.” About five years into the program, Dr. Esselstyn recommended to his patients that they stop consuming any skim milk and yogurt, as well.

Five of his patients dropped out of the study within the first two years; that left eighteen. These eighteen patients originally had come to Dr. Esselstyn with severe disease. Within the eight years leading up to the study, these eighteen people had suffered through forty-nine coronary events, including angina, bypass surgery, heart attacks, strokes and angioplasty. These were not healthy hearts.

These eighteen patients achieved remarkable success. At the start of the study, the patients’ average cholesterol level was 246 mg/dL. During the course of the study, the average cholesterol was 132 mg/dL, well below the 150 mg/dL target! Their levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol dropped just as dramatically. In the end, though, the most impressive result was not the blood cholesterol levels, but how many coronary events occurred since the start of the study.

In the following eleven years, there was exactly ONE coronary event among the eighteen patients who followed the diet. That one event was from a patient who strayed from the diet for two years. After straying, the patient consequently experienced clinical chest pain (angina) and then resumed a healthy plant-based diet. The patient eliminated his angina, and has not experienced any further events.

Not only hs the disease in these patients stopped, it has even been reversed. Seventy percent of his patients have seen an opening of their clogged arteries…

One physician took special note of Dr. Esselstyn’s study. He was only 44 years old and seemingly healthy when he found himself with a heart problem, culminating in a heart attack. Because of the nature of his heart disease, there was nothing that conventional medicine could safely offer him. He visited Dr. Esselstyn, decided to commit to the dietary program, and after 32 months, without any cholesterol-lowering medication, he reversed his heart disease and lowered his blood cholesterol to 89 mg / dL.

Is it possible that Dr. Esselstyn just got a lucky group of patients? The answer is no. Patients this sick with heart disease don’t spontaneously heal themselves. Another way to check the likelihood of this degree of success is to look at the five patients that dropped out of the dietary program and resumed their standard care. As of 1995, these five people had fallen prey to ten new coronary events. Meanwhile, as of 2003, seventeen years into the study, all but one patient following the diet are still alive, headed into their seventies and eighties.

Can any sane person dispute these findings? It seems impossible. If you remember nothing else about this chapter, remember the 49 – 0 score; 49 coronary events prior to a whole foods, plant-based diet, and zero events for those patients who adhered to a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Dr. Esselstyn has done what “Big Science” has been trying to do, without success, for over 55 years: he defeated heart disease.